


identity reveal

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: FebuWhump2021, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Whump, he gets beat up ok?, the violence is not that graphic but idk. i never know how much is enough to tag., welcome back to me beating nick up!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:08:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29143488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: febuwhump day 1: alt no.4 identity reveal.Nick was pretty sure he didn’t like this. Walking alone through an abandoned office building, his footsteps echoing off the walls, water dripping from somewhere, the occasional squeak of a rat...it wasn’t comfortable alone. Not that it would have been a luxurious task with Hank along, but it’d be better, anyway. He’d be less nervous. One tended to be nervous when one had recently found out that they were, evidently, a Grimm.
Relationships: Nick Burkhardt & Monroe
Comments: 12
Kudos: 21





	identity reveal

**Author's Note:**

> hi! welcome to my first febuwhump fic. i decided to do this this month, the month in which i am So So busy, for Reasons which i may come to regret. but i liked doing this fic! hope u enjoy it :)   
> this fic is set very early season one, pre 1x08 but anytime before that.

Nick was pretty sure he didn’t like this. Walking alone through an abandoned office building, his footsteps echoing off the walls, water dripping from somewhere, the occasional squeak of a rat...it wasn’t comfortable alone. Not that it would have been a luxurious task with Hank along, but it’d be better, anyway. He’d be less nervous. One tended to be nervous when one had recently found out that they were, evidently, a Grimm. 

But Hank had called in sick today, and this was just a precursory investigation. Nothing big, nothing dangerous, nothing that would end in disaster.

Or so he’d thought. He was climbing up the stairs to the second floor when there was a  _ clanking  _ noise from above him. Nick sighed. He really wasn’t in the mood for confrontation.

Not that that mattered. He’d barely stepped onto the second floor when someone was shining a flashlight into his face. He reflexively put up a hand to shield his eyes, squinting. 

“What’re you doing here?”

“Funny, I was just about to ask you the same question.”

The someone laughed. “What’re we doing here?”  _ Great, _ Nick thought.  _ We. _ “This is  _ our  _ territory.  _ Our  _ spot.  _ Our  _ place. Get it?”

“Find your own,” added the second person.

Nick sighed. He  _ so  _ did not want to deal with this.

“You can’t be here,” he said, imagining that saying this would do very little. 

“Who are you to say?” asked the man with the light, moving it away from Nick’s eyes to better illuminate his whole body. “We have just as much a right to be here as you.”

Nick slowly moved a hand to his gun, not liking where the situation was going.

“Get out, before I  _ make you _ get out,” said the second man, and Nick heard the sound of him slamming a fist into his palm. It would have been threatening, but Nick had a gun. He’d be fine. “Now.”

The next few seconds went by in a blur. Nick grabbed his gun. One of the men in front of him yelled. Then something hit him over the head, and then all of a sudden he was waking up tied to a concrete support pillar, and he couldn’t feel his gun. Or his badge.  _ Shit! _

“So you’re a cop,” said the voice of the man who had been shining the light earlier. He stepped closer, close enough that Nick could feel the warmth of his body, but it was too dark, or else he’d been hit in the head too hard, because he couldn’t make out the man’s face. He held something up in front of Nick’s eyes. Even in his current blurred-vision condition, he could at least see the gold tint of his police badge. 

“What’s the play here?” he asked, figuring it was best not to delay. “You beat me up and leave me here to escape and hunt you down? You kill me and have the entire Portland Police Bureau breathing down your necks for the rest of your lives? You let me go and we never see each other again?”

Someone laughed - a new voice, not either of the two from before.  _ The one who hit me over the head, _ Nick figured.

“Like that would ever happen,” he said. “A  _ cop  _ leave us alone? Now, see, if  _ you  _ had left us alone, you wouldn’t be in this situation, making bargains you don’t want to keep.”

He had a point. “I’m sure we could work something out.”

“Something that ends with us dead or in cuffs?”

“Pretty much.”

A fist slammed into Nick’s stomach. He doubled over as much as the ropes would allow, gasping for breath. 

When he picked his head up a second later, three dim outlines stood in front of him. 

“This is how it’s gonna go,” said the one on the right.

“We’re gonna hit you,” continued the one in the middle.

“And hit you,” elaborated the one on the right.

“Until you don’t feel shit,” the first said.

“If we’re feelin’ charitable, we might kill ya,” added the second.

“If you’re not so lucky we’ll let ya live,” concluded the third.

Nick pulled against the rope wrapped around him, not liking the sound of this plan at all. But it was no use. The rope was too tight, too thick, and he was too confused, too weak, too stupid.  _ He’d  _ gotten himself into this. There was no one but himself to blame. No one but himself to take whatever beating these guys were about to dish out.

It started out...tolerably. He’d been knocked around before. He’d never been tied up for it, granted, but a punch to the jaw was a punch to the jaw. 

And a punch to the head was a punch to the head. A fist to the throat was a fist to the throat. A kick to the knee was a kick to the knee. And on and on and on…

The three men moved like dancers, coordinating their punches, sliding in and out of his field of view, seemingly never interfering with each other’s plans to hurt him, but instead helping each other out. 

Three punches to the stomach from one man, causing him to bend the top of his body over as much as he could. A fist to the chin from another, snapping his head back up, exposing his chest again. A swift elbow to his ribcage, making something crack ominously. Another punch. A kick. Something to the face. Pain in his right arm. 

Eventually, the words of the men came true: he couldn’t feel anything. Or, he could, but the pain had stopped coming. Everything hurt, and he was aware of that fact, but the pain had completely enveloped him, a thick blanket against the continued onslaught. His body had reached its quota on pain, evidently. He could feel no more.

At some point, the men apparently noticed this, and decided to stop. Nick knew this because he couldn’t feel anything touching him anymore. They untied him, and he knew this because he went sliding to the floor against the pillar. He couldn’t see them. Maybe he’d closed his eyes at some point, in a baseless attempt to get the pain to stop. Maybe they were open, but there was blood preventing them from seeing. 

He blinked experimentally, and was relieved to find that he could sort of see. There wasn’t much to see, just the dark, but there was faint light streaming in through a broken window. It was enough to see drops of his own blood on the floor around him, to see a bruise forming on the back of his right hand, the only part of his body that he could see the damage to. 

He slowly shoved himself up off of the floor, leaning onto the pillar that had previously helped trap him for support. He clumsily felt his pockets. Empty, as he’d expected. Great.    
Nick took a second to collect himself, trying to ignore the way his entire body pulsed along with his slightly-too-fast heartbeat, like one giant bruise (which it probably was, he thought). He really didn’t want to go to the hospital. He also really didn’t want to go back to work. He couldn’t go home, because Juliette would make him go to the hospital, and he couldn’t go to Hank’s for the same reason. Plus, both of them would insist on involving the police, and Nick didn’t want that. He just wanted to rest. 

At last a thought came to him: he could go to Monroe’s. They were something like friends, and he was pretty sure the man wouldn’t force him to do anything. 

That settled, Nick cautiously made his way down the stairs, a task which took him perhaps fifteen minutes, as every step made his legs nearly crumple beneath him, made the breath leave his lungs in sharp gasps that were hell on his surely bruised-all-to-hell torso.

Eventually, though, he made it out of the building, and set on a slow limp for Monroe’s house, which was fortunately only four blocks away. 

Approximately an hour, three stumbles, one excruciatingly painful fall, and countless winces and groans later, Nick was standing on Monroe’s porch, belatedly realizing he had no idea what time it was. Middle of the night, he figured, not sure exactly how much time had passed during his beating. But he was here already, so there was no sense in not knocking. 

Almost immediately, Monroe opened the door.

_ “Dude,” _ he said, a look of shock on his face. “What happened to you?”

Nick pushed past him into the house, making a beeline for the couch, which he promptly collapsed onto with a poorly-concealed wince. 

“Sorry to bother you in the middle of the night,” he whispered, his voice scratching. He put a hand to his throat, and suddenly there was another hand pulling it away.

“That looks...ouch,” Monroe said, eloquently. “Shouldn’t you be at the hospital or something?”

Nick shook his head slightly. “Didn’t want to...why I came here.”

“Oh,” Monroe said. “I hadn’t realized we were at this stage of our friendship.”

“I can...I can leave,” Nick suggested, trying and failing to stand.

“No, no, don’t move,” Monroe said, gently pushing Nick back down. “I’ll uh...I’ll be back. Just give me a minute.”

He left, leaving Nick to lay his head back against the cushions, belatedly hoping that he wasn’t bleeding all over Monroe’s couch. 

A few minutes later, Monroe returned, his arms overloaded with what looked like an entire hospital’s worth of medical supplies. 

“I wasn’t sure what to get,” he said apologetically, setting it down with a loud clatter. 

“‘M I bleeding?” Nick asked, ignoring the supplies.

“A little. Your forehead’s pretty bloody. So’s like, the whole part of your face under your nose. It’s not bleeding now, though,” Monroe added quickly. 

“‘S good,” Nick figured. 

“I guess so,” Monroe agreed. “I’m gonna start with that, then. The blood, I mean.”

Nick nodded his assent, once again leaning his head back into the couch cushions, closing his eyes. A soft cloth touched his forehead, cool and damp and way more comforting than it had any right to be. Slowly, it moved down his face, at last coming to a stop below his chin.

“That’s that done,” Monroe said, clapping his hands together. “Now I’m assuming that whoever did this to you didn’t limit themselves to just your face?”

“No,” Nick agreed, briefly blinking open his eyes.

“Can I uh, take off your jacket then?”

“Sure.”

“And probably your shirt.”

“Yeah.”

The jacket came off fairly painlessly, but the shirt presented a problem.

“Unless you can move your arms up, this shirt’s not going anywhere.”

Nick shook his head. Even doing  _ that  _ hurt, let alone raising his arms. “Can’t,” he said, to emphasize the point.

“I gotta do something, man.”

“Do it,” Nick said.

“What? Nick. Do what?”

Nick, however, had used up all of his energy. He said nothing, just sighed and grimaced when the action brought him more pain.

“I really hope this is what you meant, ‘cause I’m not buying you another shirt,” Monroe said grimly, and then he began cutting down the front of Nick’s shirt. He pulled it off, audibly wincing when he saw the damage to Nick’s upper body.

“‘S bad?” Nick managed to find the strength to whisper. 

“Yeah, buddy. It’s bad. I’ll clean this up as much as I can, but you should really go to the hospital. You might have broken ribs or internal bleeding or something.”

Nick raised a shoulder in an approximation of a shrug. Those worries could wait for later. After he’d slept.

Monroe began cleaning and bandaging Nick’s upper body. He poked at the bruises a good deal harder than Nick would’ve liked, and Nick hadn’t had the heart (or the strength) to tell him that there was little point in wrapping bandages around his ribs, but overall, he did a good job of cleaning away the spots of blood and dirt that covered Nick’s skin, and the cream he’d applied to the bruises (some kind of natural remedy, he’d said), seemed to actually be working. Nick felt...marginally less terrible.

“I think that’s it. You want me to do anything else, or…?” Monroe trailed off.

“I wanna sleep,” Nick said, wondering vaguely whether he was allowed to stay.

“Go ahead,” Monroe suggested. “I’d offer you the guest room, but I can’t imagine you’re in any shape for the stairs.”

“Couch’s fine,” Nick mumbled, already on the verge of sleep. “‘S nice.” 

“Good night,” he heard Monroe say, and then he was distantly aware of being gently moved to lie down, and then he felt something very warm and a little scratchy being draped over him, and then his shoes were gone, and then he was asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! i hope you liked this and please let me know your thoughts!


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